Thursday, 10 March 2011

The heatwave in Russia was NOT caused by global warming

"Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past," Dmitri A. Medvedev, the Russian president, told top advisers during a meeting on the heat wave last July."Dmitry Medvedev, President of Russia

Last summer , during the heath wave in western Russia, Medvedev was one of the numerous voices declaring that it was all due to "climate change". Those - like Patrick Michaels below -. who already then disagreed were drowned by the force of the global warming choir:

Now, a new study by two scientists at NOAA confirms that the deadly heat wave was not caused by global warming:

The deadly heat wave that seared Russia last summer was driven primarily by a natural weather phenomenon, not man-made causes, government researchers said in a study Wednesday.---In their report, the scientists concluded that the extreme temperatures were caused by the formation of a blocking pattern, a massive high-pressure ridge that halted the normal movement of cooling storms from the west and allowed warm air to flow north from the tropics. Such anomalies are relatively common and the result of natural actions, though the intensity of the one over Russia was highly unusual.The role of human-caused warming could not be discerned from the natural weather patterns behind the event, Dr. Dole said.

Martin Hoerling, co-author of the study and head of the climate attribution team at the Earth System Research Laboratory, said that the frequency and intensity of blocking patterns is not driven primarily by heat and should not increase with the expected rise in global temperatures over the 21st century due to man-made causes.

Because the researchers are employed by the the warmist NOOA, it is not surprising that they have added this caveat to their report:

Although they found no human fingerprint on the 2010 heat wave, the NOAA scientists cautioned that man-made emissions would cause a steady rise in background temperatures, raising the likelihood of natural heat waves’ turning into far more extreme events.By 2060, they said, models show that intense heat waves could occur as frequently as once every decade.